Hunting for Exoplanets
The Infinite Monkey Cage
BBC
4.7 • 9.4K Ratings
🗓️ 26 November 2022
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Brian Cox and Robin Ince continue their LA science adventure as they visit Caltech in Pasadena to meet the scientists hunting for planets orbiting distant stars in solar systems far far from our own. They are joined in their quest by Python Legend Eric Idle and Exo-planet hunters Dr Jessie Christiansen from Caltech and Dr Tiffany Kataria from NASA's JPL who are using the latest telescopes to identify distant planets outside of our own solar system. Despite their distance from us, incredible new techniques allow exoplanet hunters to paint extraordinary pictures of the atmospheres and conditions on some of the 500 or so planets that have now been identified, and allow for the tantalising possibility of one day identifying other earth like planets that could even support life. Brian and Robin chat to Sean about what the discovery of life elsewhere out in the cosmos might mean for life here on planet earth, or whether the fact we haven't found any yet is evidence we are in fact all alone?
Executive Producer: Alexandra Feachem
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:04.8 | Hello, I'm Robin Inc. and one kind of the Eliza Doe little of this particular science show |
| 0:11.0 | on a journey of discovery. |
| 0:13.8 | And I'm Brian Cox and that presumably makes me Henry Higgins, I suppose. |
| 0:17.1 | Yeah. |
| 0:17.9 | And this is the Eminent Monkey Cage coming today from the California Institute of Technology, |
| 0:21.4 | also known as Caltech in Pasadena. |
| 0:23.6 | As regular listeners know, Brian is a proper hard scientist. |
| 0:28.2 | He refuses to believe anything unless it has an equation to explain it. |
| 0:32.8 | So I am very happy about today's show because I was surprised and delighted when he suggested |
| 0:38.2 | that we finally investigate poltergeists, despite the fact that he's obviously deeply worried |
| 0:43.8 | that they break the second law of thermodynamics. |
| 0:45.9 | So this is the first show we're going to do where we're actually going to have a say-on. |
| 0:48.8 | We're going to have an all-dead panel of scientists. |
| 0:52.7 | Robin, I think it's good. |
| 0:53.7 | Yeah, you've completely misunderstood today's show. |
| 0:55.9 | You said we're doing poltergeists. |
| 0:57.4 | Yeah, poltergeists. |
| 0:59.0 | The alternative name of PSR B1257 plus 12C, the first extra solar planet to be discovered |
| 1:05.1 | around a pulsar around 30 years ago. |
| 1:06.9 | And it's a planet with ghosts on it. |
| 1:10.3 | Today we are looking at the search rexo planets and are rapidly developing |
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